“Palermo is not a European city. It’s a Middle Eastern metropolis in Europe. It’s not Frankfurt nor Berlin, with all respect to them. We are proud of being Middle Eastern and we are proud of being European. Palermo is Istanbul, it’s Beirut. Our mission is to be a Beirut with a fast over-ground metro, to be an Istanbul fully serviced by public and free wifi…

Today, facing the epochal challenge of migration, we now are a “city of rights” where it would instead be a treason to comply with current laws. Today we are the most advanced Italian city because we have started “further back”. We have experienced the tragic and tiring journey to attain legality against organized crime, and today we want to be the reference point for the effective exercise of civil and social rights. We organised the biggest Gay Pride in Southern Europe: 300,000 people, families and kids in the street, people applauding looking outside their windows. It is thanks to migrants that we have recovered our story and our harmony: we have finally gone back to being a “Middle Eastern city in Europe.”

And the major money quote is, for me:

Beyond this, the distinction between the “asylum seeker” and the “economic migrant” based on the policies of European countries makes me shiver. What is the difference between those who are likely to be killed because their country is in war and those who are likely to starve? [My emphasis] I want to delve into this criminal logic for a moment: if I have a right to asylum, why can I not buy a plane ticket and get to Europe regularly, landing in Berlin or Rome or Madrid? The proposal to outsource the right of asylum, its management to African countries or to Turkey, and creating camps is unacceptable. Instead, it is necessary to create guaranteed arrival paths, as real humanitarian corridors.

I had felt the same shivers back in the spring of 2016 is from me, as I wrote back then:

The idea that Afghans are “economic migrants”…unlike Syrians and Iraqis, because Afghanistan is no longer a war zone, is obscene. What does the barometer for endemic violence, chronic poverty or a people’s desperation have to read for someone to be considered a “real” refugee?

And Orlando continues:

That is why I say: we must start from the local territories. From cities. Beauty is local. The fundamental values are embodied here. The national state, on the other hand, is a closed space. The European Union is not functioning precisely because it has become a place for legitimizing national selfishness. For the younger generations all that exists is the neighbourhood and the world. What’s in the middle is an obstacle to happiness, an impediment to being oneself. Migrants helped us question that idea of state, as Europe’s constituent fathers began to after the war. The construction and choice of one’s identity is the greatest act of freedom of every single person, I say as Gadamer’s pupil. My “homeland” is where I decide it is. [My emphasis]

Palermo — (I’m assuming some well-off suburb because this doesn’t look like the Palermo I know)

From Bosnia to Bengal – the purpose of this blog

I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but only a handful of people today fully understand what I'm talking about when I say that, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.